Discover Fingal Bay

Fingal Bay combines a white, patrolled surf beach with walking paths, hiking trails and a cycleway. This makes the town appealing to families who want to combine time by the water with active outings. When choosing your holiday accommodation, you can consider whether the beach, nature experiences or a cycling trip should be the focus of your holiday.

Beach and headland

Fingal Bay Beach is a family-friendly, patrolled surf beach. Fingal Beach is also suitable for family swimming and surfing. This means that, alongside surfing, swimming together is explicitly another option. If you’re looking for activities by the water on your holiday, you can consider these beach offerings an important part of your travel plans.

At the southern end of Fingal Bay Beach, Barry Park is situated on the headland. It has scenic walking paths with a wide variety of native plants. There is also a whale-watching platform on the headland at the end of the beach. The beach, walking paths and whale-watching offer different ways to experience the coastal landscape; which of them appeals to you most can shape your choice of holiday focus.

Walking trails and nature in Tomaree National Park

Tomaree National Park surrounds Fingal Bay and has 27 kilometres of interconnected walking trails. The trails offer opportunities to spot sea eagles, koalas and echidnas. These animals can also make the walks interesting for children who enjoy paying close attention to nature. Spotting them is a possibility, not a guaranteed feature of every individual trail.

One specific walking option is a trail from Shoal Bay to Fingal Bay. The section is suitable for inexperienced walkers and families with children. You can start the walk in Fingal Bay; a bus or taxi is available to return to the starting point. This lets you plan the walk as a route from Shoal Bay to Fingal Bay, rather than treating the return journey as exclusively part of the same walk. No distance or time is specified for this section.

Exploring by bicycle

The Fingal Cycleway is an easy, three-kilometre, one-way route. It runs from the Fingal end of Tomaree Road via Fingal Surf Club and Fingal Beach to Barry Park. The route connects several named points and gives you a clear guide for planning your day. Since the route is described as easy and one-way, you can weigh it differently when choosing your activities than the longer walking options in the national park.

Choosing your holiday focus

When deciding between a holiday apartment and a holiday house in Fingal Bay, it’s worth considering which experiences matter most to your family: swimming and surfing at the beach, walks at Barry Park, hikes in Tomaree National Park or a ride on the cycleway. If you’d like to include different activities in your trip, you can plan them separately and take the different types of route into account. A bus or taxi is listed as a return option for the walk from Shoal Bay to Fingal Bay; the cycleway is an easy, one-way route. These details help you distinguish between a walk and a cycling trip as ideas for the day, without equating the experiences.

More places: Running Stream, Fernbank Creek, Moore Park, Gunnedah, Gumly Gumly, Seaforth, Possum Brush, O'connell.

For the broader travel overview: New South Wales.